


Soul-Crushing

by starrylitme



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Angst and Feels, Complicated Relationships, Emotional Hurt, Heavy Angst, M/M, Past Character Death, Star-crossed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:01:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23900473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starrylitme/pseuds/starrylitme
Summary: Komaeda's not his soulmate. Hinata yearns for him all the same.
Relationships: Hinata Hajime/Komaeda Nagito
Comments: 8
Kudos: 138





	Soul-Crushing

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why I randomly decided to finish a fic that I started in like...2017. Maybe even earlier. But I sure did for Komaeda's birthday. I guess that's my tradition now. Anyway, this may be similar-ish to the other soulmates AU I posted a couple of days ago but I mean, obviously it's different because they're not soulmates in this one.
> 
> If I had to guess what past me was on...it was how much it'd suck to be in love with someone you're not meant to be with. Or something
> 
> So this fic's angsty. Yep. Maybe that's why it got finished... =3=
> 
> Aw, well. I hope you enjoy and please don't tell me about how much worse my writing has gotten over the years. I will cry.

He doesn’t remember when exactly he and Komaeda met, but there’s some strange part of him that tells him it was important. If Komaeda felt the same way, he didn’t know, but the thing was that regardless... Ever since they met, they meshed together nicely.

They didn’t belong together, though. He’d known from the get-go that Komaeda wasn’t meant to be _his_ —and Hinata also instinctively knew he didn’t belong to _him_ either. Whoever Hinata’s soul mate really was—he hadn’t met them yet. As for Komaeda... Well, _his_ soul mate actually was no longer a factor. He was one of _those_ cases—the very tragic but not that uncommon ones.

But that wasn’t a thing that Komaeda let upset him, and when he finally managed to ask him about it... Komaeda didn’t bother beating around the bush with how he felt about his ‘lost love’.

“I never knew who they were,” Komaeda had told him, arms folded with an air of nonchalance compared to Hinata’s chest aching with sympathy. “They died a long time ago—a little before I met you, I think. I haven’t mourned them... But I don’t think I even have the right to. I never knew them, after all.”

_But they were your soul mate._ Hinata wants to say but the words get stuck because he’s sure Komaeda knows that. And Komaeda still chooses to be okay with the situation when Hinata doesn’t know what he’d do. The knowledge his own soul mate is still out there, somewhere, waiting for him sits heavily in his gut. It’s the same knowledge that holds his tongue—because the last thing he wants to do is insult Komaeda by trying to understand something he has no idea about.

“Really, it’s fine,” Komaeda says anyway because he sees that sad look on Hinata’s face. He smiles softly, brightly at him in a way that stills his world. “But now you know, Hinata-kun. It’s nothing to worry about, see? I’ve long since gotten over it.”

But Komaeda had always been like that—downplaying his issues and the difficulties life had handed him with a smile and a laugh. Hinata, who would spend continuous hours mulling over his faults and insecurities, couldn’t help but admire him for it.

Because sometimes _he_ would worry, for hours on end even when Komaeda was speaking to him, about what would happen when he met his soul mate. It already seemed too good to be true, the idea of someone _meant_ for him, who’d _accept_ him for all his failings and shortcomings—another person _like Komaeda_ who would smile at him and then soothe his worries with a calming smile and a chipper ‘it’s alright’.

Another person like Komaeda...but wasn’t actually Komaeda.

* * *

Hinata wasn’t so naïve he didn’t see the problem with his feelings towards Komaeda but he couldn’t help it. Komaeda was the first friend he made in the area, he’s sure, and to Hinata that made him special.

He has other friends, of course, but Komaeda had _always_ been the one to approach him first. He was nervous when he first arrived, sometimes he tripped over his words, more times than not the wrong thing would come out, and while he tore himself up on the inside... Komaeda was still patient with him. Komaeda laughed off Hinata’s blunt observations that could come off as rude, and would warn him gently if he unintentionally strayed towards a potential ‘danger zone’.

Eventually, he could talk to the other kids normally and laugh with the others normally but at the end of the day, it all came back to Komaeda. It had always been Komaeda. And, oddly enough, Hinata wasn’t that sure if Komaeda had any friends other than himself.

He’s asked others about him a couple of times, and he gets the general gist as to why. Komaeda, as nice and helpful as he is, can be...strange sometimes.

Hinata’s not unaware about the things Komaeda would say that weren’t so soothing to hear—about the hierarchy of society, the inherent worth of the haves and have-nots, and a lot of unsettling philosophy about soul mates that he already had heard in textbooks— _about how they were always meant to complete one another, fulfill one another, and how their lives would always lead up to that fated encounter_... Stuff everyone knows but coming from _Komaeda_ , he found he personally had a bit more of a problem with it. With others, they were unsettled by the implications Komaeda may or may not have had in his tone while ranting.

“Really, you shouldn’t concern yourself with the things someone like me says anyway,” Then again another thing was that Komaeda always concludes his tirades with little statements like these. “I’m just paltry in the grand scheme of things, Hinata-kun. I really shouldn’t be talking as much as I do. But I just get excited.”

Considering also Komaeda’s own situation... Hinata’s only more concerned while others would be more suspicious as to the exact meaning behind those words. Hinata’s questioned it, but Komaeda always thought he was being straight-forward, so he’s never really gotten anywhere.

It’s frustrating—and Hinata doesn’t doubt it’s at least part of the reason why others avoid him. Even though Hinata still can’t imagine brushing Komaeda off completely to the side, not when Komaeda still tries to smile when he sees how bothered Hinata is, and insists he doesn’t worry. Sometimes, Komaeda might try to pacify him by promising to refrain from saying the things he does in the future.

He’s making excuses for it, but really Hinata couldn’t leave Komaeda even if he entertained the thought for longer than a second. Komaeda’s _special_. He isn’t special in _that_ way, but he’s special.

He’s special. Hinata never could just _let him go_.

* * *

He doesn’t expect to be accepted, of course. He’s stupid. He’s indulgent. But he’s not that stupid and indulgent—or at least he’d like to think so.

“You hang around me so often,” Komaeda says, smiling kindly but with a frustrated gaze. “Don’t you have better things to do, Hinata-kun?”

“We’re friends, aren’t we?” he refutes as if that’s all there is to it. His skin crawls before he’s cruelly reminded that it isn’t when Komaeda’s stare narrows. Those gray-greens are locked onto him, but they’re close to shutting. If Hinata could, he’d keep those eyes on him by any means necessary, even if it meant force.

Of course—he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t force Komaeda.

_Let’s wait until destiny does that._

“We’re friends,” Komaeda finally agreed after a while. When Hinata grins, Komaeda falters, his smile twitching. “We’re friends, Hinata-kun.”

Hinata presses closer him, closer than a mere friend should be.

_As long as I have a say in it, I want to stay with you. Stick by you._

The romantic sentiments linger on the tip of his tongue, but he swallows that back. Instead of words, he encircles Komaeda with his arms, holding him close.

“Hinata-kun,” Komaeda says, almost pitifully. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

Hinata nods against him, squeezing him.

“You’re the only friend I have,” Komaeda adds, wistful and wispy. As if close to fading away.

Hinata holds him even closer. Their chests press together so much so that the two of them may as well have been melded to one another. It might hurt, being held like this.

But just being this close came with unavoidable pain, because the reality of their situation hangs above. The shroud of death for the living—as metaphorical as it was physical.

The two of them were not meant to be together.

And yet, Hinata wished. He wanted. He _yearned_.

“I like you, Komaeda.”

Komaeda’s responding laugh is even more pitiful than before, a crumbled up facsimile of joy. It’s too heart-wrenching a sound to be humiliating.

“You like me, too, right?” Hinata found himself asking, softly and tentatively.

“Of course I do.” The answer’s immediate. He can’t see Komaeda’s face like this, but he’s not willing to pull back so he just imagines a soft expression even if the words don’t convey it. “As I said, we’re friends. You’re the only friend I have. How could I not _like_ you?”

_It’s all true. And isn’t that such a **pathetic** way to put it?_

Komaeda embraces him in return. Komaeda squeezes. Komaeda sucks in his breath. He sounds close to tears.

_You’re his only friend—practically all he has. You have a soul mate—someone you’re meant to be with and spent the rest of your life with. He doesn’t have anyone except you, and you’re taking advantage of him and your relationship with him._

**_What are you doing?_ **

**_What the hell do you think you’re doing to him?_ **

“That’s not what I mean.” What he’s doing is being honest. “That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

Komaeda quakes. He may have fallen to pieces if not for how he was being held tightly and mercilessly. Komaeda makes a strangled kind of noise, and Hinata’s quick to rub his back, running his fingers along that knobby, delicate spine of his. Komaeda feels more fragile than ever.

“I-It’s disgusting, isn’t it? To love someone who’s already promised to someone else.”

Komaeda’s voice is barely above a whisper before rising in fervor.

“To want to be beside that person even when you know in your bones that you don’t **_belong_** there.” His breath hitches. “Isn’t that gross? Isn’t it despicably indulgent? Isn’t it unnatural? That person—they’re promised to someone else. The best you can do is hope that someone else dies. Isn’t that just terrible?”

Hinata wants to ask him if he feels that way—but he thankfully stops himself. Komaeda is clearly spiraling and unraveling in his embrace. He doesn’t want that.

_I **want** —_

“You’re not disgusting, Komaeda. You’re a good person. I’m just a shitty friend.”

_Because I want to be yours. Just like I want you to be mine—just the two of us. I can’t imagine being with someone else._

Komaeda makes another complicated noise. To Hinata’s horror, it sounds closest to a sob. He’s quick to squeeze him, to stroke his hair and coo at him and to try and reassure him.

“If I were your soulmate, I’d be a really lucky guy—”

“But you’re not.” Komaeda cuts him off, voice tight. “And I’m not your soulmate. I lost my soulmate—that person, whoever they were—but you still have yours. You don’t need me. When you meet them, you’ll...” Komaeda laughs quietly, mirthless and tense. “I know what to expect, but still. I don’t _want_ to be discarded like trash, Hinata Hajime.”

His tone is unexpectedly venomous. Hinata almost flinched away.

Almost.

He instead stood his ground.

“I promise I won’t do that.”

“Don’t,” Komaeda sighed tiredly. “Please. Don’t.”

“It’s true,” he insisted. “You’re special to me. You’re important to me. Cosmic bond or not—that isn’t going to change. I’m always going to _like_ you, Komaeda. I swear it.”

Komaeda’s face crumbles, even as he tries to muster up another despairing chuckle.

“I like you, too. A lot. I’m sorry. I...” He tries to twist away. Hinata doesn’t let him. Komaeda’s breath catches, taking on a tone of desperation as Hinata pulls him even closer than before. “Wait. _Wait_. We mustn’t. Please, Hinata-kun, you _shouldn’t_...”

Hinata doesn’t kiss him. He does, however, keep Komaeda’s watering gaze locked with his own.

“I love you, Komaeda...Nagito. I love you, Nagito. I’m...”

_I’m not your soulmate, but I want to do right by you as one should._

“I’m going to stay with you—even if it can only be as a friend..!”

Komaeda shook his head frantically, but after a while, he just slumps into the embrace, sighing heavily as he does.

“Hinata-kun. I really like you. More than I should. But right now—I think I hate you, too.”

“That’s...” Hinata swallowed. “Honestly, that’s fair. I’m sorry. I just...”

“You shouldn’t have said anything,” Komaeda murmured tiredly into his shoulder. “In a world like this one—it would’ve been best to just keep your mouth shut.”

_Maybe he would’ve been happier that way. Or least it’d be easier to pretend. This world—_

“This world is garbage,” Hinata muttered darkly. “If someone like you is destined to be alone. I’ll defy it until the end of time. I don’t care. I’ll stay with you, Nagito. I promise.”

In what could only be described as a miracle, Komaeda’s soft bout of laugher was of genuine amusement.

“We’ll see, then. You’re already an incredible disappointment and infuriatingly defiant—even if it’s a source of despair, I can’t help...but be curious about you, Hajime-kun.”

Hinata’s grip tightened on him so much so that he couldn’t have escaped even if he wanted to. As if his will really was strong enough to rival that of the cosmic certainties of soulmates.

It’d be easy to believe that, with emotions running so strong. But Hinata Hajime only wanted to twist that passion into the truth, foolish as that endeavor may be.

Whether this was to be fortune or misfortune was something Komaeda Nagito could only dread and anticipate in equal measures.


End file.
